Porters' Pub becomes an outdoor bar – involuntarily

Just before closing time on June 22, Porters' Pub became an outdoor bar.

It wasn't a voluntary switch. Around 1 a.m., a car careened off Northampton Street and plowed through the front windows of the popular Easton hangout. Most of the clientele was orbiting the bar at that hour, so luckily nobody was injured.

On Tuesday afternoon two weeks later, Ken Porter, a member of the family that 25 years ago bought the old West Ward pub and reinvented it, was sawing through old lumber in front of his bar, while patrons sipped beers and watched.

"We didn't miss a beat," said Porter, a big guy with gray hair. On this afternoon, he was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt tucked into khaki shorts and work boots.

Shortly after the wreck, the Porters came down and surveyed the damage. The car had ripped off a portion of the iron fence built of bars they'd reappropriated from the Northampton County prison and placed around the outside seating area. It threw the fencing into the bar, knocking over one of the posts, sheering off wood that was more than a century old.

So they cleaned up the broken glass and wood and opened for business as usual a few hours later at 11 a.m.

Minus a front wall.

The Porters put up some plywood to close off the front of their establishment when they want to, but on a mostly sunny day like Tuesday, Porters' Pub is open to the breeze.

That will end soon. Glass for the windows is due to arrive next week, and Ken Porter is sawing and hammering away, putting the finishing touches on the carpentry work. Within a couple weeks, Porters' outdoor summer should be done.

"What, are you putting in a drive-through?" yelled someone driving past in a pickup truck.

Ken Porter laughed and waved. "It actually hasn't hurt business," he said. All around the neighborhood, people are poking their heads into the gaping maw to see what happened.

Porters' opened for business in 1989, decades before redevelopment started reviving downtown and drifting over the hump – the imaginary line on Northampton Street that separates downtown from Easton's most embattled neighborhood.

In that time, Porters' Pub has become a community staple. Attached to the ceiling are 4,500 numbered pewter mugs. When you drink 60 mugs of beer, the bar gives you your own with a personalized engraving.

The car crashing through the windows ducked just under a row of the mugs. Only one fell.

"Number 3,191," Larry Porter said. It wasn't damaged

In the meantime, the bar is open to comedians. The chalkboard that contains the tongue-and-cheek Porters' Playlist has listed tunes like Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" and Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" these days.